Davey Crockett
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Davey Crockett
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冖_冖
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Elon Musk suggests the U.S. should privatize the Postal Service and Amtrak
During a remote appearance at a technology conference in San Francisco, Musk told attendees the U.S. should privatize "as much as possible."
www.nbcnews.com
Elon Musk suggests the U.S. should privatize the Postal Service and Amtrak
During a remote appearance at a technology conference in San Francisco, Musk told attendees the U.S. should privatize "as much as possible."
www.nbcnews.com
Elon Musk suggests the U.S. should privatize the Postal Service and Amtrak
During a remote appearance at a technology conference in San Francisco, Musk told attendees the U.S. should privatize "as much as possible."
White House senior adviser to the president, Elon Musk, at the Capitol on Wednesday.Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images
March 6, 2025, 4:21 AM GMT+8
By Garrett Haake and Alexandra Marquez
Trump adviser and tech mogul Elon Musk suggested Wednesday that the U.S. government should privatize "as much as possible" and named Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service as two services ripe for privatization, according to a source in the room.
During a virtual appearance at a Morgan Stanley technology conference, Musk told attendees about his experiences riding bullet trains abroad and said, "And we come back to America, like, Amtrak is a sad situation."
"If you’re coming from another country, please don’t use our national rail. It can leave you with a very bad impression of America," Musk added. "So, I just, I think we should prioritize anything that can be privatized."
Ownership structures of high-speed railways abroad vary widely. Some are fully state owned, as in China. Others, like Japan’s railways, have been largely privatized. The European system is mixed.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, whom President Donald Trump on Tuesday credited with running the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, said privatization would ensure "a feedback loop for improvement."
"Basically, something's got to have some chance of going bankrupt, or there's not a good feedback loop for improvement," Musk added.
"We should try to privatize everything we possibly can, and that would be my recommendation," Musk said later.
In December, before he was sworn in to a second term, Trump floated the idea of privatizing the USPS, telling reporters at a press conference that privatization was “not the worst idea I’ve ever heard" and that "we’re looking” at it.
AZ_HighCountry
INT'L MOD
Remember when House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) revealed his discussion with Biden when Biden couldn't recall signing the executive order halting LNG exports? Now we know why — he probably didn't. The real question is: Who did? Who was running the country while Biden was not all there?
ZeroHedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zerowww.zerohedge.com
And this is exactly why there needs to be investigations. Remember on Day 1 of the Biden Regime; when the dope was caught on an open mic asking what was it he was signing and he was told "it's ok, just sign it". And he did.
These people knew he didn't have the mental ability to perform the job so they used him for 4 years to push THEIR agenda.
And every last politician who said Dopey was sharp as a tack and they never saw him more alert and in tune need to be investigated as well for their collusion in ruining the country.
Developereo
Elite Member
Musk has a tough job ahead of him.
Clearing the deadwood from any large organization is a tough task. The pigs who have been feeding at the trough will make all sorts of excuses, will deliberately slow productivity, and try all sorts of tricks to justify the bloated enterprise.
---
www.smh.com.au
Washington: Marco Rubio was incensed. Here he was in the cabinet room of the White House, the secretary of state, seated beside the president and listening to a litany of attacks from the richest man in the world.
Seated diagonally opposite, across the elliptical mahogany table, Elon Musk was letting Rubio have it, accusing him of failing to slash his staff.
You have fired “nobody”, Musk told Rubio, then scornfully added that perhaps the only person he had fired was a staff member from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Rubio had been privately furious with Musk for weeks, ever since his team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Rubio’s control: the US Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting in front of President Donald Trump and about 20 others – details of which have not been reported before – Rubio got his grievances off his chest.
Musk was not being truthful, Rubio said. What about the more than 1500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as lay-offs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. Then he laid out his detailed plans for reorganising the department.
Musk was unimpressed. He told Rubio he was “good on TV”, with the clear subtext being that he was not good for much else. Throughout all of this, the president sat back in his chair, arms folded, as if he were watching a tennis match.
After the argument dragged on for an uncomfortable time, Trump finally intervened to defend Rubio as doing a “great job”. Rubio has a lot to deal with, the president said. He is very busy, he is always travelling and on TV, and he has an agency to run. So everyone just needs to work together.
The meeting was a potential turning point after the frenetic first weeks of Trump’s second term. It yielded the first significant indication that Trump is willing to put some limits on Musk, whose efforts have become the subject of several lawsuits and prompted concerns from Republican lawmakers, some of whom have complained directly to the president.
Cabinet officials almost uniformly like the concept of what Musk set out to do – reducing waste, fraud and abuse in government – but have been frustrated by the chainsaw approach to upending the government and the lack of consistent co-ordination.
Thursday’s meeting, which was abruptly scheduled the evening before, was a sign that Trump is mindful of the growing complaints. He tried to offer each side something by praising both Musk and his cabinet secretaries. (At least one, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has had tense encounters related to Musk’s team, was not present.) The president made clear he still supported the mission of the Musk initiative. But now was the time, he said, to be a bit more refined in its approach.
From now on, Trump said, the secretaries would be in charge; the Musk team would only advise.
It is unclear what the long-term impact of the meeting will be. Musk remains Trump’s biggest political financial supporter – just this week his super political action (PAC) committee aired $US1 million ($1.5 million) worth of ads that said, “Thank you, President Trump” – and Musk’s control of social media website X has made administration staff members and cabinet secretaries alike fearful that he will target them in public.
In a post on social media after the meeting, Trump said the next phase of his plan to cut the federal workforce would be conducted with a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet” – a clear reference to Musk’s scorched-earth approach.
Musk, who wore a suit and tie to the meeting instead of his usual T-shirt after Trump publicly ribbed him about his sloppy appearance, defended himself by saying he had three companies with a market cap of tens of billions of dollars, and that his results spoke for themselves.
But he was soon clashing with members of the cabinet.
Just moments before the blow-up with Rubio, Musk and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy went back and forth about the state of the Federal Aviation Administration’s equipment for tracking aircraft and what kind of fix was needed. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, jumped in to support Musk.
Duffy said the young staff of Musk’s team were trying to lay off air-traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Duffy said. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?
Musk told Duffy that his assertion was a “lie”. Duffy insisted it was not; he had heard it from them directly. Musk, asking who had been fired, said: give me their names. Tell me their names.
Duffy said there were not any names because he had stopped them from being fired. At another point, Musk insisted that people hired under diversity, equity and inclusion programs were working in control towers. Duffy pushed back and Musk did not add details, but said during the longer back and forth that Duffy had his phone number and should call him if he had any issues to raise.
The exchange ended with Trump telling Duffy that he had to hire people from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as air traffic controllers. These air traffic controllers need to be “geniuses”, he said.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins has been dealing with one of the most politically sensitive challenges of all the cabinet secretaries. Musk’s cuts will affect thousands of veterans – a powerful constituency and a core part of the Trump base. Collins made the point that they should not wield a blunt instrument and cleave off everyone from the VA. They needed to be strategic about it. Trump agreed with Collins, saying they ought to retain the smart ones and get rid of the bad ones.
In response to a request for comment from The New York Times, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement: “As President Trump said, this was a great and productive meeting amongst members of his team to discuss cost-cutting measures and staffing across the federal government. Everyone is working as one team to help President Trump deliver on his promise to make our government more efficient.”
Tammy Bruce, a spokesperson for the State Department, responded, “Secretary Rubio considered the meeting an open and productive discussion with a dynamic team that is united in achieving the same goal: making America great again.”
A Department of Veterans Affairs spokesperson said, “As President Trump has said, it’s important to increase efficiency and reduce bureaucracy while keeping in place the best and most productive federal employees. VA is working with DOGE and the rest of the administration to do just that.”
A Transportation Department official would not comment.
Musk, who later claimed on X that the cabinet meeting was “very productive”, seemed far less enthused inside the room. He aggressively defended himself, reminding the secretaries that he had built multiple billion-dollar companies from the ground up and knew something about hiring good people.
Most cabinet members did not join the fray. Musk’s anger directed at Rubio in particular seemed to catch people in the room by surprise, one person with knowledge of the meeting said. Another person said Musk’s caustic responses to Duffy and Rubio seemed to deter other members, many of whom have privately complained about the Musk team, from speaking.
But it remains to be seen how long this new arrangement will last.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Clearing the deadwood from any large organization is a tough task. The pigs who have been feeding at the trough will make all sorts of excuses, will deliberately slow productivity, and try all sorts of tricks to justify the bloated enterprise.
---
Inside the explosive meeting where Trump officials clashed with Elon Musk
Seated diagonally opposite Marco Rubio, across the elliptical mahogany table, Elon Musk was letting the secretary of state have it.
Inside the explosive meeting where Trump officials clashed with Elon Musk
Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman
March 8, 2025 — 2.34pmWashington: Marco Rubio was incensed. Here he was in the cabinet room of the White House, the secretary of state, seated beside the president and listening to a litany of attacks from the richest man in the world.
Seated diagonally opposite, across the elliptical mahogany table, Elon Musk was letting Rubio have it, accusing him of failing to slash his staff.
You have fired “nobody”, Musk told Rubio, then scornfully added that perhaps the only person he had fired was a staff member from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Rubio had been privately furious with Musk for weeks, ever since his team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Rubio’s control: the US Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting in front of President Donald Trump and about 20 others – details of which have not been reported before – Rubio got his grievances off his chest.
Musk was not being truthful, Rubio said. What about the more than 1500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as lay-offs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. Then he laid out his detailed plans for reorganising the department.
Musk was unimpressed. He told Rubio he was “good on TV”, with the clear subtext being that he was not good for much else. Throughout all of this, the president sat back in his chair, arms folded, as if he were watching a tennis match.
After the argument dragged on for an uncomfortable time, Trump finally intervened to defend Rubio as doing a “great job”. Rubio has a lot to deal with, the president said. He is very busy, he is always travelling and on TV, and he has an agency to run. So everyone just needs to work together.
Cabinet officials clash with Musk
The meeting was a potential turning point after the frenetic first weeks of Trump’s second term. It yielded the first significant indication that Trump is willing to put some limits on Musk, whose efforts have become the subject of several lawsuits and prompted concerns from Republican lawmakers, some of whom have complained directly to the president.
Cabinet officials almost uniformly like the concept of what Musk set out to do – reducing waste, fraud and abuse in government – but have been frustrated by the chainsaw approach to upending the government and the lack of consistent co-ordination.
Thursday’s meeting, which was abruptly scheduled the evening before, was a sign that Trump is mindful of the growing complaints. He tried to offer each side something by praising both Musk and his cabinet secretaries. (At least one, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has had tense encounters related to Musk’s team, was not present.) The president made clear he still supported the mission of the Musk initiative. But now was the time, he said, to be a bit more refined in its approach.
From now on, Trump said, the secretaries would be in charge; the Musk team would only advise.
It is unclear what the long-term impact of the meeting will be. Musk remains Trump’s biggest political financial supporter – just this week his super political action (PAC) committee aired $US1 million ($1.5 million) worth of ads that said, “Thank you, President Trump” – and Musk’s control of social media website X has made administration staff members and cabinet secretaries alike fearful that he will target them in public.
A ‘scalpel’ not a ‘hatchet’
But if nothing else, the session laid bare the tensions within Trump’s team, and news of the sharp clashes spread quickly through senior ranks of cabinet agencies after it was over. This account is based on interviews with five people with knowledge of the events.In a post on social media after the meeting, Trump said the next phase of his plan to cut the federal workforce would be conducted with a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet” – a clear reference to Musk’s scorched-earth approach.
Musk, who wore a suit and tie to the meeting instead of his usual T-shirt after Trump publicly ribbed him about his sloppy appearance, defended himself by saying he had three companies with a market cap of tens of billions of dollars, and that his results spoke for themselves.
But he was soon clashing with members of the cabinet.
Just moments before the blow-up with Rubio, Musk and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy went back and forth about the state of the Federal Aviation Administration’s equipment for tracking aircraft and what kind of fix was needed. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, jumped in to support Musk.
Duffy said the young staff of Musk’s team were trying to lay off air-traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Duffy said. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?
Musk told Duffy that his assertion was a “lie”. Duffy insisted it was not; he had heard it from them directly. Musk, asking who had been fired, said: give me their names. Tell me their names.
Duffy said there were not any names because he had stopped them from being fired. At another point, Musk insisted that people hired under diversity, equity and inclusion programs were working in control towers. Duffy pushed back and Musk did not add details, but said during the longer back and forth that Duffy had his phone number and should call him if he had any issues to raise.
The exchange ended with Trump telling Duffy that he had to hire people from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as air traffic controllers. These air traffic controllers need to be “geniuses”, he said.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins has been dealing with one of the most politically sensitive challenges of all the cabinet secretaries. Musk’s cuts will affect thousands of veterans – a powerful constituency and a core part of the Trump base. Collins made the point that they should not wield a blunt instrument and cleave off everyone from the VA. They needed to be strategic about it. Trump agreed with Collins, saying they ought to retain the smart ones and get rid of the bad ones.
In response to a request for comment from The New York Times, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement: “As President Trump said, this was a great and productive meeting amongst members of his team to discuss cost-cutting measures and staffing across the federal government. Everyone is working as one team to help President Trump deliver on his promise to make our government more efficient.”
Tammy Bruce, a spokesperson for the State Department, responded, “Secretary Rubio considered the meeting an open and productive discussion with a dynamic team that is united in achieving the same goal: making America great again.”
A Department of Veterans Affairs spokesperson said, “As President Trump has said, it’s important to increase efficiency and reduce bureaucracy while keeping in place the best and most productive federal employees. VA is working with DOGE and the rest of the administration to do just that.”
A Transportation Department official would not comment.
Musk, who later claimed on X that the cabinet meeting was “very productive”, seemed far less enthused inside the room. He aggressively defended himself, reminding the secretaries that he had built multiple billion-dollar companies from the ground up and knew something about hiring good people.
Most cabinet members did not join the fray. Musk’s anger directed at Rubio in particular seemed to catch people in the room by surprise, one person with knowledge of the meeting said. Another person said Musk’s caustic responses to Duffy and Rubio seemed to deter other members, many of whom have privately complained about the Musk team, from speaking.
But it remains to be seen how long this new arrangement will last.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Davey Crockett
Elite Member
- Thread starter
- #876
Special government employees are appointed for no more than 130 days.
Elon Musk Is "Special Government Employee", White House Confirms
The White House on Monday confirmed that Space X and Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk is considered a “special government employee” under the Trump administration amid questions about his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Speaking to reporters at the White House, press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Musk’s federal status and added, “I can also confirm that he has abided by all applicable federal laws.”
Leavitt was also asked about Musk’s security clearance. She said she didn’t know but would check on it.
The designation allows Musk, the world’s richest person, to work for the federal government and potentially avoid disclosure rules regarding possible conflicts of interest and finances that generally apply to other government staff. Special government employees are appointed for no more than 130 days.
President Donald Trump said that Musk “can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval, and we’ll give him the approval where appropriate; where not appropriate, we won’t.”
The Republican president also downplayed complaints about Musk’s alleged conflict of interests, saying, “Where we think there’s a conflict or there’s a problem, we won’t let him go near it, but he has some very good ideas.”
One of the most significant steps was DOGE gaining access to the U.S. Treasury payment system, which is responsible for 1 billion payments per year totaling $5 trillion. It includes sensitive information involving bank accounts and Social Security payments.
It’s unclear what Musk wants to do with the payment system. He has said that he could trim $1 trillion from the federal deficit “just by addressing waste, fraud and abuse.”
He framed DOGE’s mission in existential terms.
Aside from the Treasury Department, Musk and Trump have set their sights on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), with both saying that the organization has been led by radicals and needs to be dissolved.
On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that he is now the acting director of USAID. He said the agency lacked accountability and that its staff did not follow orders.
ZeroHedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
That takes us to Friday, May 30th.
Davey Crockett
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Davey Crockett
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Davey Crockett
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Davey Crockett
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Davey Crockett
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AZ_HighCountry
INT'L MOD
The four years of the Biden Regime, which will be noted in history as the worst ever, was nothing but one big handout after another of taxpayer dollars with zero accountability on one failed program after another. Add in the deliberate and intentional breaking of US immigration law and absolute lack of border enforcement, it will be years before this country is turned around.
Davey Crockett
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America can turn around on a dime and not break a sweat.
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